A Dreamachine or Dream Machine is little more than a perforated tube of paper placed on a spinning platter with a light bulb positioned in the tube. Holes are cut from the tube according to a specific pattern. You sit in front of the dreamachine at eye-level with the bulb, with your eyes closed.
If constructed correctly the dreamachine should emit a pulse of light between 8-13 Hz, which is the precise rhythm of alpha-waves in the brain. Alpha-waves are dominant during the "alpha state," which occurs during deep meditation or the early stages of sleep. Alpha-waves are associated with a healthy mind and a stress-free life. For those of us with mentally taxing jobs and stressful lives, the dreamachine can restore order and relaxation, with the bonus of some interesting visual effects.
The first dreamachine was imagined and constructed by Brion Gysin sometime in the early 1960's with the aid of mathematician Ian Sommerville. Gysin, an occultist, artist and writer living in Paris, was a close friend of William S. Burroughs (who often receives credit for the invention). Burroughs and Gysin experimented with the dreamachine extensively. Both men were familiar with British neuroscientist W. Gray Walter's discovery that flashing lights quickly altered brain activity and not only the visual cortex, but the whole mind.
Aside from relaxation and increased mental abilities, dreamachine users report seeing otherworldly colors, swirling intricate patterns and dream-like images.
"Subjects report dazzling lights of unearthly brilliance and color. ...Elaborate geometric constructions of incredible intricacy build up from multidimensional mosaic into living fireballs like the mandalas of Eastern mysticism or resolve momentarily into apparently individual images and powerfully dramatic scenes like brightly colored dreams." - William S. Burroughs
People find that dreamachine therapy and other alpha-wave related therapy lead to decreased anxiety, overall calmness, increases IQ scores, increases in brain hemisphere coordination and overall intellectual function. All this without drugs!According to our good friends at Wikipedia:
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and scientist Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.
In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency, situated between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing.
A dreamachine is "viewed" with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. The "viewer" experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the "viewer" feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that viewing a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state. This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one's eyes.
A dreamachine may be dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other nervous disorders. It is thought that one out of 10,000 adults will experience a seizure while viewing the device; about twice as many children will have a similar ill effect.
The Dreamachine is the subject of the award winning 2008 feature documentary film FLicKeR by Nik Sheehan.
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Brion Gysin was originally inspired to investigate flicker effects after being exposed to light streaming through the trees as he attempted to doze on a bus one afternoon. Many now believe that the ecstatic experiences that could occur via the same phenomenon during a simple walk in the woods have lead to such arborial-mystical associations as "The Tree of Life", or even the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil".
“Really, I think, behind everything, he was trying to teach people to see differently.” Genesis P-Orridge, on Brion Gysin
The dream machine looks simple enough: A 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Just sit in front of it, close your eyes, and wait for the visions to come and offers a drugless high that its creator – poet, artist, calligrapher and mystic Brion Gysin – believed would revolutionize human consciousness.
He wasn't alone. Kurt Cobain had a dream machine.
With a custom-made dream machine in tow, director Nik Sheehan takes us on a journey into the life of Brion Gysin – his art, his complex ideas, and his friendships with some of the 20th century's key counterculture figures.
"Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me?"
"I have made a simple flicker machine. You look at it with your eyes shut and the flicker plays over your eyelids. Visions start with a kaleidoscope of colors on a plane in front of the eyes and gradually become more complex and beautiful, breaking like surf on a shore until whole patterns of color are pounding to get in. After awhile the visions were permanently behind my eyelids and I was in the middle of the whole scene with limitless patterns being generated around me. There was an almost unbearable feeling of spatial movement for a while but It was well worth getting through for I found that when it stopped I was high above the earth in a universal blaze of glory. Afterwards I found that my perception of the world around me had increased very notably. All conceptions of being dragged or tired had dropped away..."
Taking the dream machine as the basis of its explorations, FLicKeR asks crucial questions about the nature of art and consciousness, and imagines a humanity liberated to explore its creativity in complete freedom.[source]
William S. Burroughs thought it could be used to “storm the citadels of enlightenment.” Burroughs and the artist Brion Gysin, known predominantly for his rediscovery of the Dada master Tristan Tzara’s cut-up technique and for co-inventing the flickering Dreamachine device, worked together in the early 1960s on a publishing project that used a chance based cut-up method. A cut-up method consists of cutting up and randomly reassembling various fragments of something to give them a completely new and unexpected meaning. 1+1=3.
Gysin in the mid 1950’s pointed out to Burroughs that collage technique has been a regular tool in painting and graphics since half a century. This came as late news to the young Beat writers of that time, so it is perhaps not surprising that Ginsburg’s first exposure to Burroughs’s use of the cut-up was met with distain – Ginsburg considered it something along the lines of a parlor trick. Even more, Ginsburg speculated from NYC that Burroughs had lost his mind through lack of sex (note: Burroughs lusted after Ginsburg in vain). As a joke, Ginsburg and Peter Orlovsky cut up some of their own poems and rearranged them and sent them to Burroughs with the note “Just having a little fun mother”. However Burroughs was so dedicated to the random cut-up method that he often defended his use of the technique. When Ginsburg and Orlovsky arrived in Tangiers in 1961, Burroughs was working on an even more advanced use of the cut-up; he and Ian Sommerville were cutting and splicing audiotapes and Burroughs was making collages from newspapers and photographs while proclaiming that poetry and words were dead.
Burroughs would soon begin collaborating on a book project with Brion Gysin using the cut-up method; cutting up and reassembling various fragments of sentences and images to give them a new and unexpected meaning. The Third Mind is the title of the book they devised together following this method – and they were so overwhelmed by the results that they felt it had been composed by a third person; a third author (mind) made of a synthesis of their two personalities.
How to build a Dream Machine >>
How to build a Dream Machine >>
Ginsburg remained highly skeptical for some time, but following his travels in India came to appreciate the cut-up technique; even while never employing it.
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